Another mass shooting - largest in a good while, by a few victims

[Loren Pechtel]

ABC reports 400 wounded. I think it's a mistake.

Probably--I would think the wounded would be even higher. He was firing into a packed crowd--I would expect to see a lot of trampling type injuries.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

But fully automatics, which this guy appeared to have used, are already heavily restricted and society is not saturated with them. They are essentially forbidden. If he used this, which it seems he did, then he didn't get them from a gun shop, and most black market firearms are the same firearms (albeit unrecorded) of the ones in the gun shops.

Society is not saturated with fully automatic firearms.

Semi-automatics are everywhere.

And turning them in to automatics is not hard.

You're an expert on this?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

It will change nothing. Shooting six-year-olds in their classroom didn't. I have cousins who spout this "What we need is more guns" line. I've learned not to discuss this issue.

Yes, I've heard this said many times. If the cold-blooded murder of innocent schoolchildren didn't get this country to change our gun laws, then we're beyond help, and the shootings will continue. I'll never understand how Sandy Hook wasn't the point where America collectively got up and said, "Enough is enough!" Families of the slain should sue the fucking NRA for not even allowing sensible gun legislation to move forward.

What is going on is that many of us understand the defensive benefit of guns outweighs the mass shootings. Most other gun uses are by criminals and gun control laws won't stop them.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Now, recently Republicans were working on legalizing silencers. Yea, I know they don't work like in the movies. But it would have made it even tougher to tell where the shots were coming from, giving him more time to shoot up the place if he had one.

Silencers are about protecting one's hearing, not about hiding where a shot came from. "Silencing" a rifle isn't going to much to hide it.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Since it's a 64 year old, retired white male, whose motivations are unknown...

anyone want to speculate as to why he did it?

Voices. Drugs. Anger at increasing socioeconomic inequality. Anger at increasing socioeconomic equality.

I'm going to guess he was not making a lot of money, had poured his money into guns (despite what the brother said he had a pile of them) and had nothing for retirement.

 

[J842P]

Yeah, the guns are just an excuse. They people have been killing people long before guns even existed!

When, long before guns existed, was any single person credited with killing more than 50 and wounding more than 500 people from 1700 feet away?

Oh, I thought you were aware I was being sarcastic. Although, that might not have been clear. But yeah, I was being sarcastic.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I'm less interested in the why, and more in the how. We likely can't fix the why. We could at least, in theory, try to address the how. As a nation, we won't, but it is always nice to pretend for a moment, that as a nation, we'd try to see to it that this doesn't happen again... and that not requiring me to take off my clothes and empty my bags before entering a hotel.

One part of "how":
How did he get a fully automatic assault weapon? Are those modifications something that anyone can do in their garage?

1) For someone as into guns as he appears to be he could do the work himself if he could get the parts. The parts are very illegal, though.

2) It doesn't look like he had full auto weapons, anyway. The fire was fast but not even--that suggests a trigger crank or a bumpfire stock. Both are legal. The bumpfire stock makes your accuracy shit--the usual effect would be to actually reduce the threat. The trigger crank could still be accurate with a pintle-mounted weapon, otherwise it's also going to make your accuracy shit.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

So if the guy just killed 12 people and injured 100 because he was using mere semi-automatics we wouldn't be having this conversation?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

If I had access to technology, I'd be building fully auto railguns for fun, and scaring religious people with them... for fun, and scaring corrupt politicians for the greater good.

I don't think a full-auto railgun is possible--I would think it would melt.

On the other hand, if someone really wanted to be nuts--I think it would be possible to make a full auto no-license-needed machine gun. It would be so big that it would need to be on a vehicle, though.

The thing is by federal law muzzleloaders are not firearms. Nothing says they can't be sophisticated muzzleloaders. There's already a company selling suppressed rifles with no ATF hoopla--the silencers are integral to the barrel of a muzzleloader. Since the muzzleloader isn't a firearm they aren't devices meant to silence a firearm and thus are fully legal.

Take that idea further--make a gatling-gun type setup. It would need a lot of barrels due to the complexity of reloading a muzzleloader but I don't think there's any inherent impossibility to it.

 

[RavenSky]

No, one guy knifed a few people.

Just as I said: whenever a Muslim does something, it is downplayed.
Do you think it is a good idea for Canada to take in Somali fakefugees who US wants to deport because they are criminals?

Derec, quit fucking derailing this thread.

59 people are DEAD and 527 injured because a fucking WHITE MALE nutcase was able to get his hands on a shitload of guns and ammunition. Do YOU think that fuckward Trump is going to do anything about gun control in THIS country? Are YOU fighting for better gun control in THIS country?

If not, then you have ZERO ZERO ZERO position to say ANYTHING to anyone in any other country about ANY policy you think causes deaths.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Hell, before I left the military, they were switching over from M-16s with a fully automatic setting to M-16s with a three round burst setting.

That wasn't about keeping full auto weapons out of society, but because they have found that giving soldiers full-auto capable weapons reduces their combat ability. It's too easy to fire off all your ammo and then be useless. Almost never is a soldier in a position to effectively put full auto fire on target anyway--it's not something you can do very well when shooting from cover, thus a full-auto weapon mostly just shoots holes in the sky.

 

[RavenSky]

On the bright side, we finally have proof of God.

‘I’m a Firm Believer in God Now’: Emotional Las Vegas Shooting Survivor Says He’s No Longer Agnostic — Here’s Why | CBN News

“I was agnostic going into that concert and I’m a firm believer in God now,” Benge told CNN on Monday morning. “Because there’s no way that all of that happened and that I made it and I was blessed enough to still be here alive talking to you today.”

Glad that's settled.

I guess God hated those other 59 dead and 527 injured

 

[RavenSky]

My money's on a gambling addiction and a split with his partner.

mine too

 

[RavenSky]

Yes, I've heard this said many times. If the cold-blooded murder of innocent schoolchildren didn't get this country to change our gun laws, then we're beyond help, and the shootings will continue. I'll never understand how Sandy Hook wasn't the point where America collectively got up and said, "Enough is enough!" Families of the slain should sue the fucking NRA for not even allowing sensible gun legislation to move forward.

What is going on is that many of us understand the defensive benefit of guns outweighs the mass shootings. Most other gun uses are by criminals and gun control laws won't stop them.

You believe a fallacy

 

[J842P]

My money's on a gambling addiction and a split with his partner.

mine too

Sounds eminently plausible. Couple this with the guy's father having been described as a "psychopathic serial bank robber", it isn't hard to imagine that the guy simply felt like killing a bunch of people before finally killing himself over his failed life.

 

[RavenSky]

Now, recently Republicans were working on legalizing silencers. Yea, I know they don't work like in the movies. But it would have made it even tougher to tell where the shots were coming from, giving him more time to shoot up the place if he had one.

Silencers are about protecting one's hearing, not about hiding where a shot came from. "Silencing" a rifle isn't going to much to hide it.

We know that's the NRA's bullshit claim.

The fact remains that a silencer in this situation would have allowed this murderer to kill a lot more people before police located him.

 

[blastula]

Since it's a 64 year old, retired white male, whose motivations are unknown...

anyone want to speculate as to why he did it?

Voices. Drugs. Anger at increasing socioeconomic inequality. Anger at increasing socioeconomic equality.

I'm going to guess he was not making a lot of money, had poured his money into guns (despite what the brother said he had a pile of them) and had nothing for retirement.

The brother says he was worth millions.

 

[skepticalbip]

Silencers are about protecting one's hearing, not about hiding where a shot came from. "Silencing" a rifle isn't going to much to hide it.

We know that's the NRA's bullshit claim.

The fact remains that a silencer in this situation would have allowed this murderer to kill a lot more people before police located him.

A silencer does not silence. It muffles the sound of the powder burn a little but does nothing about the supersonic bang of the round, the major noise of the gun shot.

The police most likely located him by which windows were busted out.

 

[skepticalbip]

I'm going to guess he was not making a lot of money, had poured his money into guns (despite what the brother said he had a pile of them) and had nothing for retirement.

The brother says he was worth millions.

I think that a lot could be learned about his frame of mind and reasoning if his ex-girlfriend was interviewed. I'm thinking that his mindset is likely why she left him and the country.

 

[untermensche]

Semi-automatics are everywhere.

And turning them in to automatics is not hard.

You're an expert on this?

This is not the nuclear codes.